This edited book serves as a companion volume to the Seventh INFORMS Telecommunications Conference held in Boca Raton, Florida, March 7-10, 2004. The 18 papers in this book were carefully selected after a thorough re view process. The research presented within these articles focuses on the latest methodological developments in three key areas-pricing of telecommunica tions services, network design, and resource allocation-that are most relevant to current telecommunications planning. With the global deregulation of the telecommunications industry, effective pricing and revenue management, as well as an understanding of competi tive pressures are key factors that will improve revenue in telecommunica tions companies. Chapters 1-5 address these topics by focusing on pricing of telecommunications services. They present some novel ideas related to pricing (including auction-based pricing of network bandwidth) and modeling compe tition in the industry. The successful telecommunications companies of the future will likely be the ones that can minimize their costs while meeting customer expectations. In this context the optimal design/provisioning of telecommunication networks plays an important role. Chapters 6-12 address these topics by focusing on net work design for a wide range of technologies including SONET, SDH, WDM, and MPLS. They include the latest research developments related to the mod eling and solving of network design problems. Day-to-day management/control of telecommunications networks is depen dent upon the optimal allocation of resources. Chapters 13-18 provide insight ful solutions to several intriguing resource allocation problems."

This book goes beyond the discussion of global databases and presents a general Enterprise Resources Market model to facilitate the management and integration of enterprise information resources in a cooperating mode. It is the first book to analyze the problem from the perspective of information management and to present a solution for a key aspect of the cooperation problem on-demand information exchange.

This book provides a systematic examination of the developing business model, service enterprise integration. It investigates the proven concepts, models, methods, and techniques in manufacturing operations and examines all aspects relevant to service productivity. Chapters written by leading researchers provide critical literature reviews, conceptual analysis, and solution-result-oriented applications.

Distributed networks such as the Internet have altered the fundamental way a record is created, captured, accessed and managed over time. Law and ethics provide the major sources of regulatory controls over participants in such networks.

This book analyses the interrelationship of recordkeeping, ethics and law in terms of existing regulatory models and their application to the Internet environment. It proposes an Internet model based on the notion of a legal and social relationship as a means of identifying the legal and ethical rights and obligations of recordkeeping participants in networked transactions. Medical, business and governmental relationships within communities of common interest based on trust illustrate the practical application of the model. As legal relationships have their basis in the law of obligations found in common and civil law systems, as well as archival science, the model has a broad-based application. The relationship model also provides a unique ethical and legal approach to property, access, privacy and evidence. Most importantly, the book provides an interdisciplinary approach to Internet regulation, which contributes to closer ties between those who research, teach and work in fields of ethics, law and archival science.

At last, a right up-to-the-minute volume on a topic of huge national and international importance. As governments around the world battle voter apathy, the need for new and modernized methods of involvement in the polity is becoming acute. This work provides information on advanced research and case studies that survey the field of digital government. Successful applications in a variety of government settings are delineated, while the authors also analyse the implications for current and future policy-making. Each chapter has been prepared and carefully edited within a structured format by a known expert on the individual topic.

This book uses action research to conduct research activities in information technology and systems. It covers the methodological issues that arise when action research methods are conducted, provides examples of action research in practice, and summarizes the philosophical foundations of action research and its application as a methodology in Information Systems research and research programs.

Lean Manufacturing has proved to be one of the most successful and most powerful production business systems over the last decades. Its application enabled many companies to make a big leap towards better utilization of resources and thus provide better service to the customers through faster response, higher quality and lowered costs. Lean is often described as "eyes for flow and eyes for muda" philosophy. It simply means that value is created only when all the resources flow through the system. If the flow is stopped no value but only costs and time are added, which is muda (Jap. waste). Since the philosophy was born at the Toyota many solutions were tailored for the high volume environment. But in turbulent, fast-changing market environment and progressing globalization, customers tend to require more customization, lower volumes and higher variety at much less cost and of better quality. This calls for adaptation of existing lean techniques and exploration of the new waste-free solutions that go far beyond manufacturing. This book brings together the opinions of a number of leading academics and researchers from around the world responding to those emerging needs. They tried to find answer to the question how to move forward from "Spaghetti World" of supply, production, distribution, sales, administration, product development, logistics, accounting, etc. Through individual chapters in this book authors present their views, approaches, concepts and developed tools. The reader will learn the key issues currently being addressed in production management research and practice throughout the world.

This is the first comprehensive book about the emerging technology of Network-Centric Service-Oriented Enterprise (NCSOE). It establishes a system-of-systems (SoS) view of information technologies. The book discusses the practical capability of a competitive ecosystem in terms of how to achieve decision superiority from exploiting information and situation awareness as a key enabler in multiple sectors of the economy.

This book applies the concept of synchronization to security of global heterogeneous and hetero-standard systems by modeling the relationship of risk access spots (RAS) between advanced and developing economies network platforms. The proposed model is more effective in securing the electronic security gap between these economies with reference to real life applications, such as electronic fund transfer in electronic business. This process involves the identification of vulnerabilities on communication networks. This book also presents a model and simulation of an integrated approach to security and risk known as Service Server Transmission Model (SSTM).

This book examines the role of research and the production of knowledge in the information society, with special emphasis on developing areas of the world. It is based on a three day conference that immediately precedes the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), in Tunisia (November 2005). Core issues of the conference lie at the intersection of computer science and engineering, information and communication technologies, the world wide web and development. The book contains current and cutting-edge technologies and trends in the utilization of information technology for science and engineering.

Data Mining for Business Applications presents the state-of-the-art research and development outcomes on methodologies, techniques, approaches and successful applications in the area. The contributions mark a paradigm shift from "data-centered pattern mining" to "domain driven actionable knowledge discovery" for next-generation KDD research and applications. The contents identify how KDD techniques can better contribute to critical domain problems in theory and practice, and strengthen business intelligence in complex enterprise applications. The volume also explores challenges and directions for future research and development in the dialogue between academia and business.

This book records one of the continuous attempts of the IFIP Working Group 8. 2, studying the interaction of information systems and the organization, to explore and understand the shifting boundaries and dependencies between organizational activities and their computer support. The book marks the result of the IFIP WG 8. 2 conference on "Designing Ubiquitous Information Environments: Socio-Technical Issues and Challenges. " Since its inception in the late 1970s, IFIP WG 8. 2 has sought to understand how computer-based information systems interact and must be designed as an integrated part of the organizational design. At that time, information systems handled repetitive and remote back-office functions and the main concern was work task design for repetitive input tasks and the potential impact of improved information support on organizational decision-making and structure. The focus of the information system design shifted in the 1980s when computers became part of the furniture and moved into the office. Reflecting this significant change, IFIP WG 8. 2 in 1989 organized a conference dedicated to the design and impact of desktop technology in order to examine how organizational processes and the locus of action changed when the computer was moved into the office. Sixteen years later, we are experiencing another significant change. Computers are now becoming part of our body and sensory system and will move out of the traditional office locations and into the wilderness. Again, IFIP WG 8.

The IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI) and Pacific Asia Workshop on Intelligence and Security Informatics (PAISI) conference series (http: //www. isiconference. org) have drawn significant attention in the recent years. Intelligence and Security Informatics is concerned with the study of the dev- opment and use of advanced information technologies and systems for national, int- national, and societal security-related applications. The ISI conference series have brought together academic researchers, law enforcement and intelligence experts, - formation technology consultant and practitioners to discuss their research and pr- tice related to various ISI topics including ISI data management, data and text mining for ISI applications, terrorism informatics, deception and intent detection, terrorist and criminal social network analysis, public health and bio-security, crime analysis, - ber-infrastructure protection, transportation infrastructure security, policy studies and evaluation, information assurance, among others. In this book, we collect the work of the most active researchers in the area. Topics include data and text mining in terr- ism, information sharing, social network analysis, Web-based intelligence monitoring and analysis, crime data analysis, infrastructure protection, deception and intent det- tion and more. Scope and Organization The book is organized in four major areas. The first unit focuses on the terrorism - formatics and data mining. The second unit discusses the intelligence and crime analysis. The third unit covers access control, infrastructure protection, and privacy. The forth unit presents surveillance and emergency response

Knowledge Management and Management Learning: Extending the Horizons of Knowledge-Based Management examines a range of topical considerations in the field by utilizing dynamic and non-linear systems behavior or the complexity paradigm. From this examination have come a number of new and promising relevant extensions to knowledge management and its practice. Many of the topics have been pulled from "real world" situations in actual companies, and therefore these topical treatments reflect quantitative and qualitative research done within the knowledge management framework of actual company experience. Offered are a series of topical treatments that extend the parameters of knowledge management and examine the practical implications of these extensions.

The book begins with an extended introduction and theoretical framework. The contributing authors have written chapters that add to both the framework and the practical consequences of knowledge management. Within this context, the book illustrates why and how of knowledge management is important for companies.

Business-to-business (B2B) integration is a buzzword which has been used a lot in recent years, with a variety of meanings. Starting with a clear technical definition of this term and its relation to topics like A2A (Application-to-Application), ASP (Application Service Provider), A2A, and B2C (Business-to-Consumer), Christoph Bussler outlines a complete and consistent B2B integration architecture based on a coherent conceptual model. He shows that B2B integration not only requires the exchange of business events between distributed trading partners across networks like the Internet, but also demands back-end application integration within business processes, and thus goes far beyond traditional approaches to enterprise application integration approaches.

His detailed presentation describes how B2B integration standards like RosettaNet or SWIFT, the application integration standard J2EE Connector Architecture and basic standards like XML act together in order to enable business process integration.

The book is the first of its kind that discusses B2B concepts and architectures independent of specific and short-term industrial or academic approaches and thus provides solid and long-lasting knowledge for researchers, students, and professionals interested in the field of B2B integration.

The World Wide Web has become a ubiquitous global tool, used for finding infor mation, communicating ideas, carrying out distributed computation and conducting business, learning and science. The Web is highly dynamic in both the content and quantity of the information that it encompasses. In order to fully exploit its enormous potential as a global repository of information, we need to understand how its size, topology and content are evolv ing. This then allows the development of new techniques for locating and retrieving information that are better able to adapt and scale to its change and growth. The Web's users are highly diverse and can access the Web from a variety of devices and interfaces, at different places and times, and for varying purposes. We thus also need techniques for personalising the presentation and content of Web based information depending on how it is being accessed and on the specific user's requirements. As well as being accessed by human users, the Web is also accessed by appli cations. New applications in areas such as e-business, sensor networks, and mobile and ubiquitous computing need to be able to detect and react quickly to events and changes in Web-based information. Traditional approaches using query-based 'pull' of information to find out if events or changes of interest have occurred may not be able to scale to the quantity and frequency of events and changes being generated, and new 'push' -based techniques are needed."

The IFIP series publishes state-of-the-art results in the sciences and technologies of information and communication Proceedings and post-proceedings of referred international conferences in computer science and interdisciplinary fields are featured. These results often precede journal publication and represent the most current research. The principal aim of the IFIP series is to encourage education and the dissemination and exchange of information about all aspects of computing.

This book charts the effects of new communication technologies and the Internet on the creation of music in the early 21st century. It examines how the music industry will be altered by the Internet, music online services and MP3-technology. This is done through an integrated model based on an international history of the industry since the phonograph 's invention in 1877, and thus, the history of the music industry is described in full detail for the first time.

This textbook focuses on the members of the digital value chain for eBusiness and eCommerce and dedicates a separate chapter to each of them: eProducts and eServices, eProcurement, eMarketing, eContracting, eDistribution, ePayment, as well as eCustomer relationship management. In addition to business models and business webs, digital procurement and marketing processes such as electronic negotiation processes, security questions with digital signatures, as well as electronic supplier relationship management and customer relationship management are also addressed. The topics are described using explicit procedures and descriptive examples of their application. A case study describing the gradual creation of an electronic webshop for DVDs is developed over the course of the book.

The book is intended for students of economics at universities and technical colleges; it is also suitable for executives, project leaders, and company experts who deal with the digital value chain.

The material collected in this book covers a broad range of applications of computer science methods and algorithms in business practice. It presents cutting edge research in development, implementation, and improvement of computer systems. The computer science and information systems topics covered include data warehouses, ERP, XML, ontologies, rule languages, software engineering and Business Process Management.

Telecommunication markets are characterized by a dynamic development of technology and market structures. The specific features of network-based markets, convergence of previously separate spheres and the complex task of market regulation put traditional theoretical approaches as well as current regulatory policies to the test. This book sheds light on some of the challenges ahead. It covers a vast range of subjects from the intricacies of market regulation to new markets for mobile and internet-related services. The diffusion of broadband technology and the emergence of new business strategies that respond to the technological and regulatory challenges are treated in the book 's 24 chapters.

This book details metagraph theory and its applications. It begins by defining a metagraph and its uses, which allow for the representation and analysis of more complex systems. The first part of the book develops the theoretical results with an emphasis on the development of a metagraph algebra. In the second part, four promising applications of metagraphs are examined.

This book represents the compilation of papers presented at the IFIP Working Group 8. 2 conference entitled "Information Technology in the Service Economy: Challenges st and Possibilities for the 21 Century. " The conference took place at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, on August 10 13, 2008. Par ticipation in the conference spanned the continents from Asia to Europe with paper submissions global in focus as well. Conference submissions included complete d research papers and research in progress reports. Papers submitted to the conference went through a double blind review process in which the program co chairs, an associate editor, and reviewers provided assessments and recommendations. The editor ial efforts of the associate editors and reviewers in this process were outstanding. To foster high quality research publications in this field of study, authors of accepted pape rs were then invited to revise and resubmit their work. Through this rigorous review and revision process, 12 completed research papers and 11 research in progress reports were accepted for presentation and publica tion. Paper workshop sessions were also esta blished to provide authors of emergent work an opportunity to receive feedback fromthe IF IP 8. 2 community. Abstracts of these new projects are included in this volume. Four panels were presented at the conference to provide discussion forums for the varied aspect s of IT, service, and globalization. Panel abstracts are also included here.

Advances in wireless technologies promise to reshape the way we conduct business. Yet to make wireless e-business work effectively, a variety of enabling technologies are needed.

Kou and Yesha and their contributors provide comprehensive information on these technologies, including, for example, wireless security, mobile payment, location-based services, mobile data management, and RFID technologies. The presentation is targeted at students, lecturers, e-business developers, consultants, and business managers, and this book is an ideal introduction for both self-study and taught e-business classes or commercial training courses.

"I believe this is an excellent book to acquire comprehensive knowledge on enabling technologies for the blooming wireless e-business. I highly recommend this book!" Robert Mayberry, Vice President, Sensors and Actuators, IBM Software Group

This book provides a balanced, empirically-based view of the "Digital Economy," and explores its regional and geographical import in areas where the Digital Economy meets more traditional patterns. More than just an interpretive analysis, this book utilizes empirical evidence in its assessment of the dynamics of specific regions in different parts of the world. The book also examines the policy implications of the rising Digital Economy.